In­stead of mak­ing 10 trips dai­ly, the wa­ter taxi is mak­ing on­ly two be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Port-of-Spain, leav­ing scores of pas­sen­gers in a lurch.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said two of the fer­ries, which are on dry­dock will come on stream at the end of the month, al­le­vi­at­ing the cur­rent prob­lems.

On­ly the Paria Bul­let is func­tion­al while the Ca­lyp­so Sprint­er and Car­ni­val Run­ner are on dry­dock. The Tri­ni Flash, which suf­fered a fire dam­age since April, is still out of com­mis­sion.

Sinanan said yes­ter­day the cur­tail­ing of sail­ings was main­ly be­cause of the bad weath­er.

He said he was mind­ful of the hard­ship suf­fered by pas­sen­gers.

Sinanan said on Thurs­day arrange­ments have been made by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion to put ad­di­tion­al bus­es on route to as­sist them.

On its Face­book page, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Nid­co) stat­ed it was hav­ing on­ly one sail at 5.30 am and an­oth­er at 3.30 pm dai­ly. The wa­ter taxis usu­al­ly make 10 sail­ings per day when the four fer­ries are op­er­a­tional.

De­par­tures from San Fer­nan­do usu­al­ly take place from 5.30 am, 6.15 am, 8 am, 3 pm and 4.30 pm, while de­par­tures from Port-of-Spain oc­cur at 6.45 am, 1.30, 3.30, 4.30 and 5.40 pm.

How­ev­er, be­cause of main­te­nance is­sues, these sched­ules have changed with sail­ings fluc­tu­at­ing each week. Sail­ing time has al­so in­creased from 45 min­utes to one hour.

Nid­co did not ex­plain why there were on­ly two sail­ings but apol­o­gised to cus­tomers for the in­con­ve­nience. The post sparked an­gry com­ments from com­muters who said the time of the sail­ings should be changed to ac­com­mo­date pas­sen­gers.